Category: Life

America From the Italian Point of View Part Three: Farewell

When I last left you on our grand tour of the northeast, we had just returned to New Hampshire from New York City. If you’ve missed any of the posts about our trip, you can catch up here with Part One and Part Two.

 

We returned from New York very late Friday night. Stefania and Bruno only had a few days left in America. Originally, we had plans to take them to Boston and Portsmouth and the Flume—where once you could see the Old Man in the Mountain. But we were all pretty wiped out, so for the next few days, we mostly just relaxed at home. We walked around my neighborhood and downtown Concord. We played badminton and basketball—which resulted in me jamming my pinkie and having to tape my fingers together for the next three days. We pulled off a surprise birthday party for my mother, which was a lot harder than I would have thought but also a ton of fun. And of course, we played a ton of Uno. My younger brother was now home from Juilliard, and he added a new element of fun to our games. Also, he got to learn his Italian numbers and colors as well.

 

We did go out to Portsmouth for lunch one day so they could try fresh lobster, which they loved. And finally, on their last day, we went into Boston early and spent the hours before their flight left showing them my personal favorite city in the northeast. We went to Harvard Law School so they could see where I will be studying and living for the next three years. We went up to the observatory at the Prudential Center, and just like at the Top of the Rock in New York, we could see all of Boston. Finally, we walked around the waterfront and the North End, saw a couple of the monuments along the Freedom Trail, and ate some last cookies from Mike’s Pastries.

 

All in all, I think we gave them a really good trip around the northeastern United States. They saw Washington D.C. and New York and Boston. They also saw quieter places like Concord and Portsmouth New Hampshire and Gettysburg Pennsylvania. They got to try different styles of American food from different regions. And we did our best to keep it leisurely.

 

We learned a lot about each other’s cultures as well. For example, I learned that Italians eat roughly the same number of meals as hobbits. They learned how tipping in restaurants works and that you do not drink maple syrup. To correct this last bit of misinformation, we actually made them waffles one morning and showed them how to use maple syrup appropriately, then sent them home with a jug of New Hampshire maple syrup (us New Hampshirites are very proud of our syrup).

 

But more than the exchange of culture, it was so much fun for me to spend three weeks with Stefania and Bruno again. I feel like I learned more about them, and they learned more about me, than we did in the nine months I spent in Italy. This is probably because I was so much more comfortable at home than I ever was in Italy. It was because of them that I was able to complete my Fulbright, but I was still so scared in Italy that I just acted like a turtle and retreated into my shell to wait it out. But in these three weeks, I really felt like I was myself with them more than I ever was in Italy, and we had so much fun together. Already, they’re planning to come back for my law school graduation in three years, if they can. If I can pluck up the courage, I’d like to go back to Italy—not to visit Italy but to visit them. After all the time we’ve spent together, they have become part of our family.

America from the Italian Point of View Part Two: Washington D.C. and New York

I meant to write this on Saturday, but I jammed my pinkie playing basketball, and it’s a bit difficult to type with your fingers taped together. My fingers are still taped together, but I don’t want to put this off any longer. If you missed the beginning of our grand tour of northeastern America, check out last week’s post here.

 

When I left you last, my Italian host parents, Stefania and Bruno, had arrived, and we’d spent a few days in New Hampshire and then traveled to Pennsylvania to visit my aunt, whom Stefania and Bruno knew because she came with me when I first traveled to Italy at the beginning of my Fulbright year. We also introduced them to Rocket, our rambunctious black lab puppy—not so much a puppy anymore, but still crazy. We spent a rainy day relaxing, playing with the dogs, and playing game after game of Uno. My mom learned all her Italian numbers and colors, and watching Stefania and Bruno’s interactions while playing cards was eerily similar to my own grandparents.

 

The next day, we went to Washington D.C. I haven’t been to D.C. in ten years, and I barely remember it. We walked along the mall, visiting the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument, the Vietnam Memorial, and the new World War II Memorial, which I’d never seen before. Stefania and Bruno were very interested in seeing the World War II Memorial, because they know the history from the Italian front, and they were interested to learn about the war from the American point of view. Thanks to my senior honors thesis, this is something I could discuss at length, even in Italian. It’s an interesting juxtaposition, that for them, the war happened on their soil, to their citazens, in an immediate and terrible way, but in America, the violence of the war didn’t touch civilians in the same way. America was fighting a larger war than Italy as well, because of the European and Pacific fronts, and even though the only attack on American soil was Pearl Harbor, the war was still felt at home in America, with every citizen pitching in to help with the war effort in a way that has not been seen since.

 

On our way back from Washington, we stopped in Gettysburg and had dinner at a really interesting restaurant. It was in the oldest building iin Gettysburg, constructed in 1776. We ate at a table, but other parties were eating in 1800s-style beds, and all the servers were dressed in Civil War style clothing. It was really cool for Stefania and Bruno, who knew about the Civil War and were very interested in it.

 

The next day, we left Pennsylvania and drove north to New York City, where we spent five full days. I’ve been going back and forth to New York all year, visiting law schools and seeing my brother at Juilliard, so I feel like I know the city pretty well. Until I got into Harvard, I thought it was where I would be living for the next three years. But it’s been a long time since I’ve done the touristy things in the city. We started with Time Square and Fifth Avenue and St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Then we spent a whole day at the September 11 Memorial Museum. It was incredible, but also very difficult, as it should be. I don’t think anyone can go through that museum with dry eyes, and we didn’t even get through all of it. It was just so much to take in—the faces of all the victims, the recordings of phone messages from people on the planes and in the Towers telling their family they loved them, the pieces of the buildings and the planes and the charred fire trucks. It was incredible not only to see all of this but to share such an intensely American experience with Stefania and Bruno, who of course had heard about the attack on Italian news but never quite appreciated the extent of what that day did to America in the same way we did.

 

After Ground Zero, we walked along the High Line, which used to be the tracks for an elevated train along the Hudson but is now a walking path. Like the bridge over the Hudson in Poughkeepsie, we had expectations that were much different from what the reality actually was. We expected a view of the city, but instead we found ourselves dwarfed, as usual in the city, by skyscrapers on all sides. We could barely even see the Hudson. However, Stefania and Bruno really enjoyed the leisurely stroll and the chance to see all the different plants and flowers planted along the walkway. They were also fascinated byt the way old, historical buildings were right next to brand new skyscrapers all over the city. I wouldn’t have thought this would be anything of note for them, because this is in fact very similar to Italy, where history is literally layered on top of older history, but I think they were so interested because it wasn’t something they expected to find in America.

 

We spent the next day at the Statue of Liberty. We climbed the pedestal, and they were able to get audio tours in Italian, which gave me a break from translating. I told them about my own grandparents, who came to America as children from Italy, stopped at Ellis Island, and saw the Statue of Liberty as a symbol of freedom and opportunity, just like so many other immigrants.

 

Finally, on our last day in New York, we walked leisurely through Central Park and went to the top of Rockefeller Center. This was incredible, because we could see all the places we had visited all week. Stefania and Bruno were just overwhelmed with everything we’d done and seen. They’d never imagined that they would be able to come to America and see New York in person. It’s thanks to them that I could see so much of Italy last year, so I’m glad we were able to give them this chance.

America From the Italian Point of View Part One: First Impressions

Last year, when I was in Italy, my landlady and landlord, Stefania and Bruno, basically adopted me. I ate with them every day, and they took me all around Umbria. Honestly, I couldn’t have completed my Fulbright without them. So when I left last June, my family and I invited them to come to America. And this week, after months of planning, they did.

 

They’ve been here for four full days now. They have recovered from their jetlag, and we’re planning a leisurely tour of the northeast. So far, we’ve had a lot of fun.

 

We picked them up Monday night at the airport. It took over an hour for them to get through customs, while we waited on the outside and tried not to worry too much. Neither Stefania nor Bruno speak any English, and without any English, we knew it would be hard for them to navigate the airport. At the same time, we knew that other Italian travelers or the flight crew from Italy would be able to help them. Finally, they came through customs, and we set off for NH. After a light dinner, we all went to bed. I was glad to find that while my Italian is a little ragged around the edges, it is still very much alive and kicking. I did devote the last several weeks to reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone in Italian, which I’m sure helped.

 

On Tuesday, we relaxed and strolled around our neighborhood, but it was a bit rainy, so we didn’t do much. It was a good day to sleep and continue to adjust to American time (Italy is six hours ahead). Things I took for granted before I spent a year in Italy—like ziplock bags, vegetable steamers, and garbage disposals—fascinated them. They were also fascinated by the chipmunk population in our backyard. I guess chipmunks are far less common in Europe, and also apparently chipmunks are cute (I know a lot of people think they’re cute, but having never seen one, I’m not so sure I can get too excited about it, especially when it sounds like they’re candle pin bowling with acorns in our attic at midnight).

 

It continued to rain on Wednesday. I had a clarinet recital, just for them, where I played the concerto I’ve been working on all year. It went really well. Then we all cooked my mom’s famous roast chicken and my up-and-coming smashed potatoes together, and then I taught Stefania and Bruno how to play Uno. Of all the games I have, it seemed the simplest to play in multiple languages. Throughout my very fractured explanation of the rules in Italian, Stefania asked question after question, but Bruno said absolutely nothing, giving me no indication of whether he understood what I was saying. I was pretty nervous about it, pretty sure I completely messed it up, but apparently I did all right, because Bruno creamed us all.

 

On Thursday, we drove from New Hampshire to Pennsylvania. It was a long, long drive, but we took the scenic route, and they enjoyed seeing the American countryside and the architecture. They’re keeping a running list of all the states we’re driving through and visiting. We spent a lot of time going over the geography with them. We stopped in Poughkeepsie New York and crossed the Hudson River on the Walkway over the Hudson. It was a bit cold and windy and still cloudy. Honestly the bridge wasn’t what we expected, given everything we’d heard about it. It was so big that it was really just like being on a road—it didn’t feel like a bridge—and the sides of the bridge were so high it was difficult to see the river over them. But it was a nice way to stretch our legs, and we found a good lunch right on the waterfront. Finally, we had the quintessential American experience: eating McDonald’s for dinner in the car. We’d planned to have dinner upon our arrival in Pennsylvania, but the walk over the Hudson took longer than expected, and we hit a bit of traffic, and we knew we didn’t want to eat dinner at ten o’clock.

 

Today is another day for relaxing. It’s still raining. We really hoped we would have escaped the rain, but at least it’s a little warmer, and the forecast is for better weather. This weekend, we’re going to visit Washington D.C. and Gettysburg. Then we’ll start back up towards New Hampshire, spending a few days in New York along the way. Once back in New Hampshire, we plan to spend a day in Boston, where I’ll show them where I’m going to school next year. We’re also planning to go to Portsmouth for lobster one evening. And based on the hours and hours we’ve spent playing Uno so far today, we’ll be doing lots of that too.

 

So far, I think it has been a great experience for them. I’m certainly having fun, and it’s really just nice to see them again and show them America, after everything they did for me in Italy.

 

The purpose of the Fulbright program is cultural exchange and understanding. I learned so much from Stefania and Bruno about Italian culture, and while I explained a lot of aspects of American culture to them, it’s one thing to have it explained to you and another to see it. We’re barely a third of the way through their trip, but I think already they’ve seen a lot of American culture. Here’s hoping the rest of the trip is as great as these first few days have been.

Decisions, Decisions

Jameyanne and Mopsy standing in front of the Harvard law school library. Jameyanne is wearing a Harvard Law School T-shirt and has her hands in the air.For most of my life, I’ve had people telling me that I should go to law school because I would make an excellent lawyer. My response was always an unequivocal no. Absolutely not. I will never go to law school. It’s the last thing I wanted to do. Ever.

 

But almost a year and a half ago, I attended a dinner held by the Umbria chapter of the International Lions Club, which turned out to be several hours of listening to people complain about how hopeless and impossible it was to get money for their guide dog school and, when dinner was finally served, attempting not to shout at these same people who applauded when I poured myself a glass of water or cut up my chicken independently. By the time I got home, it was past two in the morning, and I had school the next day. But I was so tired and angry and frustrated—not just with what had happened at the dinner but with my whole first month in Italy. And as I tried to fall asleep that night, my thoughts shifted from an angry tirade to a new idea: I could do something about this. And I started considering the unthinkable: law school.

 

As untinkable as it was, I couldn’t let the idea go, and soon it wasn’t unthinkable at all. It was something I wanted to do.

 

And so began a journey whose ending I am just now reaching. First I made everyone swear not to say “I told you so.” Then I started studying for the LSAT with my mother, first on the trains to and from Ancona and Venice in June, then on the plane back to America, then all summer. We read the Princeton Review LSAT book cover to cover twice. Then I practiced with each individual section type, and then I did entire practice tests—using real old tests I bought from the Law School Admission Council. My score steadily improved over the month of September. Finally, in October, I took the LSAT. While I waited for my scores, I created a list of nine schools I wanted to apply to.

 

At the end of October, I received my LSAT scores. They weren’t as high as I wanted—I’d been consistently scoring six to eight points higher on my practice tests. but they were still really good, and I decided, since my LSAT scores were far from the complete picture, that I would apply to all nine of the schools on my list.

 

From November through March, I received acceptance after acceptance. In the end, I was accepted to eight of the nine schools, and many of them offered me significant merit scholarships. In the end, my decision came down to Harvard and Columbia. I’d visited a couple other schools, but they didn’t have the right feel, and I’d eliminated the others because they were either too far from home—I knew I wanted to stay in the northeast—or because they just weren’t in the same league as my top choice schools, and since I’m interested in going into the federal government, I need to go to the best school I can. It’s actually common advice, to just go to the best law school you get into. I knew that both Columbia and Harvard would get me where I wanted to go, so I decided to visit both schools and leave it up to my gut.

 

This month, I attended the admitted students weekends at both schools. There were a lot of things I really liked about Columbia. I liked the neighborhood and the feel of New York City. Everyone was really nice, and it seemed like it had all the opportunities I was looking for. Then I learned that Columbia Law School doesn’t have a dining hall, and in learning that this wasn’t available, I realized how important that was to me. It’s not that I don’t want to have to cook for myself during my first year of law school—though I don’t—it’s that the lack of a dining hall—the lack of any common space—coupled with the fact that all the law students live in apartments off campus, really made the school feel like there was no sense of community. It felt like people went to school and then left and went home to their regular lives. While I was sure I could handle this and still make friends and not starve, it wasn’t the situation I was looking for.

 

So when I went to Harvard, it was with the knowledge that I wasn’t completely in love with Columbia. I felt like I would have to absolutely hate Harvard for me not to choose it, but I didn’t hate Harvard. From the moment I stepped onto the campus, I had that gut feeling that this was it, and that feeling only grew. Everyone I met was incredibly smart and friendly. Harvard has law school only dormitories and apartments, as well as its own dining hall and gym—and the food is fantastic. Everything is so close together. The mock class I attended, the real class I sat in on, and all my interactions with the professors told me I would have every opportunity I want now and some more that I don’t yet know I want. Also, I really liked Cambridge. Like really liked it. And so did Mopsy. The law school is on its own little campus inside the larger university campus, but right outside the gates is Harvard Square, and right around the block is a Mike’s Pastries (I’ve always wanted to live in the North End of Boston because of Mike’s Pastries, so this is just an added bonus).

 

And so I made my choice. I thought it would be a really difficult decision, but in fact, when it came down to it, it was pretty easy. I firmly believe that things work out the way they’re supposed to, and that your gut feeling is really important when making these kinds of decisions.

 

And so a journey I started a year and a half ago has come to its conclusion, or really, I should say it has come to another beginning. I have made my decision, and I have made it official: in the fall, Mopsy and I will be attending Harvard Law School.

What I Learned at the Disabilities Rights Center

Last October, after I took the LSAT, I started volunteering at the New Hampshire Disabilities Rights Center. I wrote about this a bit before Christmas, but now I’ve worked there for six months, and yesterday was my last day. I’m about to embark on the epic road trip of visiting law schools, and after that, my landlady and landlord from Italy are coming to visit, but I was very sad to be leaving.

 

I’ve had plenty of experiences where I’ve learned so much in a short time—not just in terms of knowledge but also in terms of myself—and these six months were no exception. I learned a ton, so much, it’s difficult to quantify.

 

I performed research—of the legal sort as well as your garden variety google searches. I learned how to find and read federal and state laws. I learned all sorts of new words, like “pursuant” and “furtherance.” And I researched and wrote a brochure on service animals and the Air Carrier Access Act as well as an article on the rights of students with traumatic brain injuries.

 

After Christmas, I worked with the Help America Vote Act team. We worked on publicizing the new accessible voting machines. We also wrote a pamphlet on creating an accessible campaign—through events, website design, and mailings—and contacted all the campaigns, planned monitoring visits of polling places all over the state to get feedback on the new machines and to check on basic accessibility requirements, and coordinated with the national organization RespectAbility to get people with disabilities to campaign events and to get disabilities rights issues on the table. I even got to do all investigation—by which I mean call a bunch of town clerks, ask them about absentee ballots that weren’t counted because of mismatched signatures, and hope they were honest with me. It was all super fun.

 

I also got to observe several stages of a case concerning denied eligibility of services, from its preparation and filed motions to the pre-hearing conference and the hearing itself. I worked on several stages of a different case myself, drafting Right to Know letters—the New Hampshire state equivalent of a FOIA request—and then I read, organized, and cataloged all the evidence we received from those requests—the discovery part of the case.

 

I did research for our policy director that he used in meetings with the state legislature. I reviewed specific facility policies and compared them to state laws regarding seclusion and restraint practices, and then I drafted a letter highlighting the areas where the facility was out-of-compliance. Finally, I learned about the immensely complicated and scary process of legislative history. (It became much less scary once I found my way to the state library where a lovely librarian found everything for me.) Basically, I went back into the history of a 1947 state law and read the original bills and the notes in the House and Senate journals for the original law and then several relevant amendments, all of this in order to determine the law’s intent. Legislative history is something, I’m told, that most law students don’t do until their second or third year.

 

So yeah, I did a ton, and I learned, and I’ll probably be starting law school in the fall with a bit of a head start. But my experience at the DRC gave me more than that. I had so much fun going to work every day, because every day I was working on something different and learning something new. I loved having lunch with all the attorneys and hearing about what they were working on and how they planned to approach it. And I will be forever grateful for all the support and advice they gave me as I went through the application process for law school, received all my acceptances, and began working my way towards a decision (a decision I still haven’t made yet, hence the epic road trip of visiting law schools I’ll be starting next week).

 

But it’s even more than that. I’ve said it before, and I’m sure I’ll say it again many more times, but a year ago, I was absolutely miserable—the rejections for the MFA programs I’d applied to were piling up, I’d decided I didn’t want to get a masters in comparative literature after all, I was not really enjoying teaching, and on the whole I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. Somehow, I clawed my way out of that mess of disappointment and uncertainty, and I took all the experiences I’d had and decided I wanted to go to law school. I put all my energy into studying for the LSAT and applying for law school. But at the same time, in just the last few months, everything I thought I wanted to do with my life had been turned on its ear, and right then I wasn’t sure I could trust that my decision to go to law school was really right for me. What if I hated it? What if I discovered something else I liked more? What if I was just unhappy right here and right now but I was still giving up on all my dreams? But after just a week at the DRC, I was confident, and that confidence has only grown over the last six months. Now, I am absolutely sure I am on a path to a career that matters to me and that I will enjoy every minute of. Now, I just have to pick a law school.

Writing a Synopsis at the Last Minute

A few weeks ago, I wrote about beginning to query agents for my novel. All very exciting stuff, and it’s getting more exciting. When I left you, I said all I had to do was polish my query letter and finish up my synopsis and I’d be set to go. Well, the synopsis wasn’t going so well, but I didn’t want to lose all the momentum I had going, so I said, I’ll pick five agents who don’t require a synopsis for my first round of submissions, and once I query them, I’ll really get down to editing the synopsis. So that’s what I did.

 

Except for the synopsis part.

 

Before I submitted my queries, I had written a five page double-spaced synopsis that took a reader through the entire book, blow by blow. I had then edited it down to three pages. Most agents want a one-two page synopsis, and this was where I was struggling. If you’ve never tried it, describing a 330-page manuscript from start to finish in one page is really hard. Really, really hard. Throw in the fact that this 330-page manuscript has two storylines—one from the protagonist’s point of view in the present and one from her parents’ points of view in the past—and it gets even harder. So yeah, I was pretty stuck, and I was pretty much ignoring it. I figured I had until I was rejected by all five agents before I needed a synopsis for the next batch, and that was plenty of time.

 

Until one of the agents didn’t reject me and instead requested sample chapters and, you guessed it, a one-page synopsis. It was a moment of great excitement—my query works!—but also sheer terror. Now I needed a working synopsis—a working, one-page synopsis—and I needed it now. Actually, I really needed it yesterday so I could be submitting it now. And, oh yeah, I still didn’t know how to do that.

 

The good news was I wasn’t starting from scratch. The bad news was I felt completely overwhelmed. I had a three-page synopsis that was split into the past and present storylines, similar to how the book is set up, but it was awkward and clunky and way too long, and even I—with my expert cutting skills—was having trouble making it shorter. I started to panic. I wanted to get these sample chapters and synopsis off to the agent as soon as possible, but I wasn’t ready, and I didn’t know how to make myself ready to do that. And did I mention I should have had this done yesterday?

 

Once upon a time, I was crazy organized and on top of things. I had homework done a week in advance—that sort of crazy. Then I went to college, discovered television and a social life, and learned to procrastinate. And as I remembered after the fact, this is not the first time I’ve been caught off guard and had to produce something at light speed. And it worked out really well then, too (I got into Alpha). But this wasn’t a short story. This was a whole book boiled down to a page.

 

I panicked for about half an hour all over my skype writing group and some people from Alpha who’d helped me with my query. Finally, they managed to get me calmed down enough to think straight. They reminded me that the synopsis isn’t really that important. It’s not something to blow off, certainly, but many agents view it as a formality, a way to tell that your story has a beginning, middle, and end, and nothing whacky flying out of left field in the last sentence. My sample chapters were good, they reminded me. I just had to calm down, finish the synopsis, and get it out the door.

 

And that was all well and good, but I still didn’t know how to fix the synopsis. A couple people suggested that, since the parents’ storyline really is a subplot, it didn’t need to take up nearly as much room in the synopsis. I could just include a quick paragraph about it when the protagonist finds out the relevant information. I went back and forth on this. The parents’ storyline is really important to me. In earlier drafts of this novel, I had people insist that I cut it all together, but I really felt like it added a whole other layer of complexity to the novel and to my protagonist’s motivations, so I stuck with it. So I didn’t want to just eliminate the parents from the synopsis, because I reasoned, if they aren’t important enough to include in the synopsis, why are they so important to the novel? And I couldn’t say something along the lines of “The novel is told in three points of view,” because according to all my research on how to write a synopsis, you aren’t supposed to get that meta—no themes or motifs or even discussions of writing or point of view—just the plot and characters and some stuff about the setting. But this idea of boiling down the parents’ storyline into a short paragraph and then inserting it at a critical point in the synopsis clicked with me. Best of all, it allowed me to focus my wildly scattered panic into motivation and energy and get to work.

 

I cut out all the stuff about the parents, getting the synopsis down to just over a page. Then I wrote my short paragraph about the parents and stuck it in where I thought it should go. Now, instead of a three-page synopsis, I had a page and a half. Much more manageable. I went through sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, restructuring and trimming until, at last, it fit on one page. I was victorious! And best of all, when all was said and done, I was actually pretty proud of my work. It didn’t feel like something I’d thrown together in a few adrenaline-fueled hours, it felt strong and polished, like it might stand a chance at convincing an agent that I know how to tell a story.

 

There’s a lesson here. If I had finished the synopsis earlier like I’d meant to, I could have avoided losing my head. Unfortunately, I didn’t learn that lesson. But here’s the thing, all that time that I was “procrastinating” on the synopsis, it was still stewing in the back of my mind. That’s why the new take on how to handle the parents’ chapters clicked with me so quickly—my subconscious was probably already halfway there. So when someone lit a fire under me, I had everything I needed to get it done and get it done well. And now, if anyone else asks for a synopsis, I have it.

 

And now that it’s done and I’ve caught my breath, I can take the time to really savor how exciting all this is. It may turn out that this particular agent isn’t the right fit, but maybe she is, and anyway it’s great to know that my query has grabbed someone’s attention and that I’m on to the next step. So keep your fingers crossed for me.

 

I Read Too

I talk a lot about Braille literacy. Many of you have probably heard this before—multiple times—and I’m sorry for repeating myself, but I’m going to anyway. Actually, I’m not sorry at all, because it just keeps coming up. This is the area of disability rights that I am most passionate about (at least right now), and for obvious reasons: I love to read. Books have always been my best friends.

 

So like any bookworm, I measure time by when books I want to read are coming out. In the last two weeks, two books I’m excited about have been released: The Girl Who Raced Fairyland All the Way Home by Catherynne Valente and Lady Midnight by Cassandra Clare. Just today, I found out about another book I want to read that was released today—Seven Ways We Lie by Riley Redgate (a current Kenyon student). Later this month, the third Colours of Madeleine book—A Tangle of Gold by Jaclyn Moriarty—will be coming out. But I don’t know when I’m going to be able to actually read these books. Not because I’m super busy (I always make time for books), but because they aren’t available in Braille yet. They will be, I’m sure, but I have no idea when.

 

This has been an issue my whole life. I had every single Harry Potter book spoiled for me except the last one, because the publishers gave an advance copy to the National Braille Press so they could translate it into Braille and ship the books to arrive on the release day. And that was a big deal. It shouldn’t be a big deal anymore. Technology has advanced so much since 2007, what with the proliferation of eBooks and Braille displays alike. It should just be the press of a few buttons to take a digital file of a book and translate it into electronic Braille. So why isn’t it happening like that?

 

The answer is that it’s probably a matter of some complicated subsidiary right that hardly anyone thinks about because the blind population is so small and the Braille reading population is even smaller. Which brings me to Braille literacy. Now, I enjoy a good audiobook as much as the next person, but I prefer to read in Braille. And the idea that the Braille-reading population is so small they don’t warrant the same attention as the general populace only perpetuates the problem.

 

The idea behind disability rights is inclusion in society at large, but because we can’t read a book at the same time as our peers, we are excluded. At best, we end up playing catch-up to our friends who have already read and discussed the book. But more often than not, especially with the internet and the way it tends to go crazy when long-anticipated books are suddenly available, major plot points of the book are spoiled for us, which could ruin our enjoyment of the book.

 

Yes, I’m blind, but I read too. And the problem of Braille literacy extends beyond fiction to education and employment issues as well.

 

Here’s the deal: only 10% of the blind read Braille—it’s true. It’s also true that hardcopy Braille is expensive and huge, and Braille displays and notetakers are expensive too (though considerably less huge). But none of this means Braille should be abandoned. Braille is the only viable way for blind people to read. A literacy rate of 10% is not evidence that Braille is impractical; it is evidence that 90% of the blind population is illiterate. Studies have shown that blind children who just use audio in school instead of learning to read do not develop the critical reading and thinking skills necessary for success in school and society. Denying blind children their right to be taught because it is inconvenient or expensive—as so many are—is a violation of their civil and human rights. All children who can see learn to read. It should be the same for children who are blind.

 

To give one analogy, the literacy rate of the blind in America is less than the total literacy rate in some of the least educated countries of the world, and it would be unacceptable to say the people of Afghanistan or Mali or Niger or South Sudan are illiterate because it is too expensive or inconvenient to teach them.

 

I love to read, but I am passionate about Braille literacy for reasons beyond my desire to be able to have a book in my hands the day it comes out (like everybody else, I might add). My parents had to fight for my right to learn Braille in elementary school, but many parents don’t have the knowledge or means to do that. When the school district insists that students who are blind don’t need Braille, how can they argue? But there is no substitute for reading when it comes to fostering independence.

 

Braille literacy is an issue all over the world. Programs like Perkins International send teachers and equipment to developing countries to teach Braille, believing that reading is fundamental to education, and education is fundamental to success. Yet Braille literacy is still a huge problem, even in the United States. Almost 70% of the adult blind population is unemployed, and this can be traced back to inappropriate or absent services in school, including lack of training in Braille.

 

On my first day at the New Hampshire Disability Rights Center, one of the attorneys told me about a decision involving a child who was not being taught Braille. The judge gave the decision to the school district in Braille and told them to read it without accommodations. This is the kind of thinking and action that makes a difference. It’s also just plain awesome! But there still needs to be a shift in the overall discussion towards how Braille can be extended to those who need it so the blind can have the same advantages as the sighted and reach their full potential as contributing members of society.

 

I Am Diverse

My coworkers at the Disability Rights Center asked me to share the essay I wrote for my diversity statement for my law school, and since then I’ve been thinking a lot about diversity. It’s a term that’s being thrown around a lot these days and with good reason. But while I hear a lot of “we need to be more diverse”—whether it’s in education or employment or the arts—I don’t hear a lot of why.

 

What I liked about the chance to write a diversity statement was that it captured the point of diversity, the essence of its value to society. It didn’t just ask if I belong to a marginalized group. It asked how belonging to a marginalized group affected my experiences and perspectives. That, to me, is what diversity is all about. It isn’t just a number or a label. I am a person who is blind, yes, but that doesn’t in itself make me diverse. Because I am blind, I have experienced my whole life differently even than someone with sight who did the exact same things I did. It is these different experiences and challenges that I have had to overcome that give me a unique perspective to add to any conversation. That, to me, is why diversity is important: it aims to add all voices to a conversation, thus enriching that conversation with the fullness of the human experience.

 

To that end, I wrote my own diversity statement about my experiences in my high school marching band: my feelings of exclusion, my struggle for reasonable accommodations, and finally success not only for myself, but also for the band and the community at large.

 

So without further ado, here it is:

 

Playing my clarinet in the school band was the first time I felt fully included in an activity with my sighted peers. But when I entered high school, the band started formation marching in the halftime shows at the football games, and our band director simply could not see a way for me to participate. I was forced to stand and play on the sidelines, conspicuously out-of-place as the rest of the band marched behind me. I no longer felt like I fit in. In fact, I felt like I stuck out like a sore thumb, standing by myself and playing my part isolated from my section. By the end of my sophomore year, I had had enough. I did some research about other blind people in marching bands, formulated a plan, and presented it to the music department. They said I could try it if I found someone to help me.

 

So I approached my best friend, Amy, and asked if she would guide me for the halftime shows. She agreed, and after a lot of tripping over each other’s feet and several collisions with the sousaphone section, we learned to move across that football field as if we were one person. Amy stood behind me and kept her hands on my shoulders. She was like my shadow, guiding me to each exact position on the field as I played, but we moved together: Backwards march. On beat five, start playing “Eleanor Rigby”. Float sixteen. Hold twelve and dance. I was part of the band again.

 

The local news came to the championship to film the marching band with the “blind girl,” and when they said, “Where’s the blind girl?” we knew we’d done it. Amy and I changed the marching band together. And the marching band, Amy, and I changed the community and its perceptions.

 

During the summer, I joined a team of blind and sighted teenagers, and we hiked in the Andes in Peru and whitewater rafted the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon with Erik Weihenmayer, the first blind person to climb Everest. Erik told us that when we work together, we all learn from each other, and at every step on those trips, we did. The blind members of our team were able to tackle and surmount an extraordinary physical challenge. At the same time, the sighted teens saw us climb those mountains and succeed. As we realized we could participate in sighted society, they realized they wanted us to participate—we were in fact great people just as capable and normal as they were, even if we had to approach challenges in different ways. Capable and successful people with disabilities break down barriers, change perceptions, and enhance communities.

 

And so it was with the marching band. I was not only able to march, but I showed the band, the school, and the community I could, and by extension, anyone can, given the opportunity. With our will and courage and music in our ears, Amy and I “stepped off,” together, “me and my shadow”.

 

Other Favorite Books Before 2015

Welcome to part 2 of my discussion of my favorite books. This is the second half of the books on my book recs page that I read before 2015. If you missed the first part, it’s here, and if you’re interested in further exploration into my literary mind, check out my favorite books of 2015. The books here are historical fiction and contemporary, young adult and adult alike.

 

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak: I first read this in Turin in the summer of 2012. I vividly recall beginning to read it on the beach at Le Cinque Terre, and then continuing to read it on the train ride back to Turin. After that… I don’t much know where I was or what I was doing besides reading this book. I loved the characterization of Death as the storyteller. I loved the setting, the integration of the German language, the story of the ordinary people in Germany during World War II, and the multiple layers that each character had. I cried so hard at the ending that my ears popped and I seriously alarmed some Italians passing my open apartment door at the time. The Book Thief is definitely one of my all-time favorite books, and it really influenced how I inevitably wrote my honors thesis a year later.

 

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford: I read this book in one sitting, one summer when I was back from college and my brother was just finishing up his year in high school. I was supposed to be helping him finish an essay, but he didn’t really need my help, so I was just hanging out in the room (in case he did need help) reading this book. And because it seems to be a pattern with these books, I again started balling my eyes out, which really freaked my brother out. This book is beautiful. It’s the story of a Chinese American boy falling in love with a Japanese American girl right before her whole family is taken to the internment camps during World War II. It also tells the story of the boy, forty years later, now a man, beginning to search for the girl again when the belongings of several interned Japanese families in the basement of a hotel. I’m not going to lie, I found the story in the past much more gripping than the story in the present, but they came together really nicely. It’s a story about a time in history I don’t know a lot about—the Japanese internment—I know a lot about World War II in general. I’d like to read more about it.

 

Atonement by Ian McEwan: I read this book for the first time in high school, when most of it went right over my head. Then I read it again right before my senior year of college, as part of the many books I read as I was preparing to write and then as I was writing my thesis novella. All I can really say about it—without giving spoilers—is that it’s an incredibl novel, and if you haven’t read it, you should.

 

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson: This is another book I read for my thesis. Unfortunately, I was also experiencing lots of eye pain at the time too, so I don’t remember a lot of specifics about the book. I do remember being fascinated by it. It is an intricate look at how our choices affect our lives—the main character is continually dying at various points in her life, being reborn and living all over again with different outcomes each time basd on different choices. It’s also very similar to a game I like to play while reading a book or even writing one. If you’d just gone left instead of right. If you’d just said something. How would a different choice change the story? And that’s what this book is about.

 

Forgotten Fire by Adam Bagdasarian: I read this my first year of high school, and then again in the fall of 2014. This is another fantastic book that if you haven’t read it, you need to. It’s about the Armenian genocide in 1915, so be warned: a lot of people die. But it is a beautiful, beautiful book. I’m pretty sure it’s based on the true story of the author’s grandfather. It’s a very fast read, and it is most definitely worth it.

 

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr: I read this just before Christmas, 2015. It’s about a blind girl in World War II France. I’ve read a lot of World War II books, and honestly this on was only so-so whn compared to some of the others, but it did hook me, and I loved the representation of people with disabilities in this time. It felt very realistic to me. This book is also the reason I wrote my first story about a blind character myself.

 

Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher: Another book I read for my thesis, though very late in the process—I think over Spring break when my thesis was due April 1. It’s about a boy who is sent a set of tapes from his dead classmate that give thirteen reasons why she committed suicide. It is a very emotionally raw book, but it also felt real and very important.

 

Veronica Mars books by Rob Thomas and Jennifer Graham: I read these after I finished watching the TV show. They certainly weren’t as tightly packed as the show, but I still really enjoyed them and I’m hoping there will be more.

 

Digging to America by Anne Tyler: This book felt more like a short story collection than a novel, because each chapter was so contained, but I did really enjoy it. It was sort of a relaxing read, about adoption and immigration and what it means to be American.

 

A Passage to India by E. M. Forster: I read this a few times for various classes and because it was on the reading list for the senior honors exam at Kenyon. I’ve also written a few papers on it, so I could wax eloquent about themes and imagery and structure and social and historical commentary, but all I’m going to say is that this is a great story that eluminates a moment of change in India.

 

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf: Like A Passage to India, I read this for a few different classes and then for the senior honors exam. I’ve written a few papers on it as well, and I most enjoy talking about it through the lens of the importance of memory. (I know, I know. My English major is showing.) But again, it’s just a good story and worth a read.

 

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz: Another honors exam book, but this one was not only interesting from an English major standpoint. It was also fun to read. It reminded me of A Prayer for Owen Meany, which is also somewhere on this list. Also, I’ve always been interested in Latin American history.

 

The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith: This is one more book that I read for my thesis. I’ve lost most of the specifics (an exploding eye will do that to two months of your life), but it was really fast and really gripping. Also, possibly the first time I’ve wanted a truly horrible person to succeed, even if I wanted him to get caught at the same time.

 

My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult: I went through this period in high school where I read like five or six Jodi Picoult books all at once. This is one of my favorites, though the ending annoys me to no end. It’s an interesting premise, and the plot takes all kinds of turns along the way. I will say, however, that this is the rare book where I enjoyed the movie more.

 

Keeping Faith by Jodi Picoult: This book is my all-time favorite Jodi Picoult book (of the five or six that I read). Every single book that she’s written that I’ve read has a twist ending that sometimes works but sometimes doesn’t. Keeping Faith doesn’t have a twist. It just has the plain right, natural ending.

 

A Mango Shaped Space by Wendy Mass: This is another book I read in Turin, and I absolutely loved it. I’ve always found synesthesia in all its forms to be fascinating, but the real power of this book, the loss of a beloved pet, didn’t hit me until five months later, when we lost our yellow lab, Kokopelli, to bone cancer.

 

A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving: I read this in high school in my AP Literature class, and it is still one of my favorite books.

 

The Kite Runner by Khaled Housseni: I read this one summer in high school, and I found it so profound and relevant that it has stuck with me.

 

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Housseni: I read this right after The Kite Runner, and it had the same effect. It’s been a while since I read both these books, so I don’t really know how to describe why I liked them so much, except that they were just incredible.

 

Tortoll and Other Lands by Tamora Pierce: This book was just so much fun, filled with all kinds of short stories, both fantasy and more literary, set in our world and Tamora Pierce’s other universes. It’s a great read.

 

In the Forest of Forgetting by Theodora Goss: These stories were all just beautiful. Every one was like its own tiny world, with so much to explore and enjoy.

 

The Periodic Table by Primo Levi: I read this for my thesis, and it was really interesting. Each story is named after a different element of the period table, and it’s a mix of stories that the author wrote during his experiences in World War II Italy and snippets of autobiography of those experiences.

 

The Assisi Underground by Alexander Rumati: This book is really excellent. I read it for my thesis, and then it was fascinating to reread it after spending a year in Assisi. It’s about the priests who hid Jews from the Nazis in Assisi, Italy. I strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in World War II or Italian history.

 

Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand: Another thesis research book, and a fabulous one. Again, I strongly recommend. It was fast but still well-written and emotionally moving.

 

Half the Sky by Sheryl WuDunn and Nicholas Kristoff: I read this the summer of 2012, after my second year at Alpha. Another Alphan recommended I read this book to help me with revisions with my short story “The Year of Salted Skies,” which later was the third runner-up for the 2014 Dell Award, so those revisions paid off. But this book was definitely worth reading for more than making thoughtful revisions to a story. It’s about sex trafficking, and I think it’s a book that everyone should read.

 

Writing Magic by Gail Carson Levine: I read this right before Christmas in 2014, right before I started my final major revisions on my small child magician novel. I love this book because, let’s be honest, I agree one hundred percent with the writing advice it gives, and it’s also just plain fun to read.

 

Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott: It’s een a while since I read this, so I really don’t remember specific, but I do remember really enjoying it, and I can say that I get my philosophy on shitty first drafts directly from this book.

 

The Elements of Style by William Strunk and E. B. White: Funny story about this book: My parents got it for me in hard copy Braille when I was about twelve because I was writing all the time, but I somehow got it into my head that it was about fashion, so I didn’t read it for like eight years. Now, I swear by it. It’s more about grammar than writing, and I often find myself looking up some of the more complicated rules. While most of my hardcopy Braille books have stayed on my bookshelves as I’ve traveled the world, The Elements of Style came with me to college and then to Italy. It will probably come with me to law school too. Did I mention I swear by it? Serial commas forever!

 

Voting for Independence

Spend time in any foreign country, and you come back with a profound appreciation for America. Personally, after a year in Italy, I will never look at wireless internet or consistent hot water or dryers the same way. I have a friend in Japan right now, and from what I’ve heard, he really misses central heating. One thing I did not expect, when I went to Europe, was how much I would learn to appreciate voting. I am still thoroughly confused by how the Italian political system works, but based on conversations with my students and friends, Italians don’t vote for the specific candidates. They vote for the party, and there are a lot of parties. I taught a few lessons on American elections, and my students were always amazed and envious of the power Americans have in government. But one thing I was always sure to tell my students is that not everyone has the same power. I, as a person with a disability, have never been able to exercise my right to vote independently and privately before.

 

Almost from the moment our country was founded, America has expanded and then expanded again the electorate, creating laws that gave one disenfranchised group after another the right to vote: first the poor, then African Americans and other racial minorities and women. In 2002, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act, which guarantees the right to vote accessibly, privately, and independently to all people with disabilities. In 2009, I turned eighteen and registered to vote, and I have never been able to vote like everybody else. Twice, using an absentee ballot at school, I had to rely on friends to fill in my ballot for me. I trusted them, but at the same time, I couldn’t see who they were really voting for. The absentee ballots were far from accessible, far from independent, and far from private. When I signed the envelope afterwords, and I had to choose the reason why I was using an absentee ballot, I accidentally signed over the part that said “Because I am blind and require assistance.” The one time I voted in person, during the 2012 New Hampshire primary, when I arrived at my polling place and asked how I could vote independently, I was greeted with blank stares. I had to have assistance in the voting booth, and when I left, and the people conducting the exit polls asked who I’d voted for, I responded “I honestly don’t know.” (Because I’m that person.) Just two weeks ago, I learned that there was an accessible voting system available at the time, something called a phone/fax system. I’ve heard a lot of horror stories about it, but I never got to try it. I didn’t even know it existed.

 

But this year is going to be different. At the Disability Rights Center, I’ve been working with the voting accessibility team for the last several weeks on ways to make this election as accessible as possible and ways to promote that accessibility to the public. New Hampshire has just rolled out a new, accessible voting machine. It uses a tablet, a set of headphones, a keyboard, and a printer. An automated voice will read the choices to me, and when I hear the candidate I want to vote for, I press enter, and it prints out my ballot. It’s all been very exciting. It’s the first project I’ve worked on at the DRC that I’m seeing to fruition.

 

This morning, I went to the New Hampshire Association for the Blind and tried out one of the machines before the primary, and it definitely has some issues that need to be worked out. First of all, I have never heard a speech synthesizer so awful. I understand the state is working with free, open-source software, but when the speech is not lined up in each ear of the headpiece (so it sounds like it’s echoing itself) and when candidates names are pronounced so badly I’m not sure who they are, we have a problem. I’ve worked with all sorts of speech synthesizers all my life, and some mispronunciation is to be expected. I accept that. No computer can pronounce my name correctly if I don’t add it to the pronunciation dictionary, after all, so it only seems fair. But some of these mispronunciations made no sense. How we get “Burn Sanders” from Bernie Sanders and “Carl Fiorine” from Carly Fiorina (to give just two examples) is beyond me.

 

Another issue is that it is possible to vote for two candidates by accident, especially if you’re rushing. And after listening to almost 30 terribly mispronounced names, who wouldn’t want to rush? (Get this voice out of my head! Seriously, it’s like nails on a chalkboard! Make it stop!) But if you do accidentally pick two candidates, and you also happen to be blind, how are you going to know once your ballot gets printed? You’re not, and your vote won’t be counted. Which brings me to the ballots themselves, which are printed on regular printer paper rather than the cardboard used for everyone else’s ballots. Ballots from the accessible machine are easily distinguishable from other ballots, and they have to be counted by hand rather than the automatic ballot counter. If one voter uses the accessible voting machine, the election moderator is also supposed to use the accessible voting machine when they vote to create privacy for the person who used the machine, so it’s not too bad, but it’s still different. Finally, this machine is designed to be accessible to all people with disabilities. It includes a way of voting with voice rather than with the keyboard or touch screen, but due to some technical issues with the microphone being too sensitive, that isn’t working yet.

 

There’s a lot to work on with these machines, obviously, but I want to stress how great this really is. No, it’s not perfect, but it’s a huge stride forward for New Hampshire voters with disabilities. For me, if everything goes according to plan, tomorrow will be the first time I am able to vote as if I were sighted. And there’s a lot of potential for this technology, once all the bugs are worked out.

 

A few weeks ago, a friend linked me to a cartoon (and then described it to me because there was no alt text). In the cartoon, a group of kids are waiting in front of a school while a man shovels snow off the stairs up to the entrance. Among the waiting students is a girl in a wheelchair. She asks the man if he will shovel the ramp. The man says he will, as soon as he finishes with the stairs so the other students can go inside. He tells the girl in the wheelchair to be patient, but the girl says, “You know, if you shovel the ramp, then we can all go inside.”

 

This struck me as so simple and so poignant, yet at the same time so obvious that most people would overlook it as a solution. People with disabilities don’t want “separate but equal.” We want inclusion. This is the eventuality I hope for for this new voting machine. There shouldn’t be two systems—one for the able-bodied and one for the disabled. There should be one system that will work for everyone. That is obviously the intent behind this new technology: the system is called “one4all,” after all, and anyone can vote using the tablet.

 

So I’ll take the glitches, with the promise that things will be improved. Of course, if things aren’t improved, I will get cranky. But tomorrow, I’m going to vote!

 

Now I just need to figure out who to vote for.